Re: [Qemu-devel] License issues

[Simson Garfinkel]

On Aug 14, 2008, at 7:47 AM, Anthony Liguori wrote:

> Simson Garfinkel wrote:
> > Greetings. Yesterday I posted a query regarding the license of some  
> > of the .h files.
> >
> > Basically, all of the image layer files area clearly licensed to  
> > have no restrictions, but some of the necessary .h files are  
> > missing that license.
> >
> > Who is responsible for maintaining the license of the .h files?
>
> Whoever originally committed the code. If you look at the LICENSE  
> file, I think the safe thing to assume is that if a file doesn't  
> have an explicit license associated with it, it is licensed under  
> the GPL.

Thanks for responding, Anthony.

I agree with the explicit statement. However, it doesn't seem to make  
sense in this case. The disk image .c files are all explicitly  
unrestricted, but they include .h files for which the license is  
unstated. So my feeling is that this is an oversight.

Is this even relevant for .h files?  They do not contain executable  
code that is compiled.

The reason that I am asking is that I want to use the QEMU VDK support  
for a forensic software library that I maintain, but I do not want the  
library to be GPL'ed. If I need to, I'll rewrite the .h files, but  
this seems like a waste of time if it is not necessary.

-Simson

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